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Japanese Style Home Tea Ceremony

An Overview of a Japanese Style Home Tea Ceremony
Tea is considered an art form, and the tea ceremony is focused on serving, your guests, the surroundings, calmness, attention to details, simplicity, and the appreciation of ichigo ichie.
 
Preparation:
The most important preparation for the host is to be focused only being in harmony with their soul. Conflicts, anxiety, worry, everything that pulls into the past or the future, needs to be dealt with. Focus will have to be in the now.
 
For the guest, they will need to leave behind all the material thoughts and concerns and focus on absolving their hearts of all the negativity of life.
They wait for the host to announce they are ready to receive them.
They wash their hands to symbolically remove all the dirt and dust of the outside world.
They enter in and bow to the host as a sign of respect. 
 
The ceremony starts with cleaning the matcha teaware involved. The host will clean the utensils in front of your guests, and then aesthetically set them. The cleaning and setting of the tools need to be done in a graceful way so that the procedure is aesthetically pleasing to look upon. No unnecessary movements or conversations are allowed in the ceremony and everything from cleaning to how the guests are treated has to be in harmony.
 
The Matcha is prepared and served in a bowl.
 
The bowl is presented to the main guest, they will admire it, and rotate it before drinking the tea. They will wipe the bowl and offer it to the next guest who will repeat the process until everyone has had the bowl. 
 
The host will clean the tools and teaware, and the guest inspect the teaware as a sign of respect for the host. They carefully examine and handle everything with care.
They bow one last time while leaving.
 
Details, products, and more can be found on Teaologists website:
https://teaologists.co.uk/blogs/teaologists-health-habit-blog/how-to-run-a-japanese-tea-ceremony-at-home-the-steps

Every cause and effect needs a pause and reflect

Every cause and effect needs a pause and reflect
We’ve experienced the tea now using all 5 senses. What communication is being conveyed to you? 
What is the tea saying?
What do see in this moment? 
What do you feel as you touch the cup?
How does the aroma and flavor make you feel?
 
These are some reflective questions, every sip, and every thought will cause something in you if you allow it. In this moment, every thought causes a ripple into the future. I truly understand this saying now, “The butterfly effect says that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can cause a typhoon halfway around the world.” and I was thinking to that effect that a small raindrop in the ocean can cause a tsunami by the time it reaches the shore... small causes may have large effects. 
 
Every experience during your tea time is important. The messages received can change the trajectory of your life. The experiences are causes and effects. After your tea time while you are there and finishing, or after you have departed ways, take time to the reflection of the experiences and the meaning behind each element of the tea time. Write down what you received from it. Ask yourself some of the questions from the top. 
 
This is how you savor the flavor, by completely enjoying the moment, by dwelling on every aspect of what happened. 

Taste and Smell: Savor the Flavor!

Taste and Smell: Savor the Flavor!
Savor: enjoy or appreciate (something pleasant) completely, especially by dwelling on it.
 
The nose and mouth are connected through the same airway which means that you taste and smell foods at the same time. Since they both use the same types of receptors, if one's sense of smell is not functional, then the sense of taste will also not function well because of these receptors. So taste and smell work hand in hand. 
 
The sense of taste can recognize salty, sweet, bitter, sour and savory, but when you combine this with the sense of smell it adds another dimension to the flavor experience.
 
Prayer has an aroma - “May my prayer come to you like the sweet smell of incense. When I lift up my hands in prayer, may it be like the evening sacrifice.” -Psalm 141:2 NIRV  In Isaiah the wrong attitude causes a stench.
 
Successful Communication and attitude has a taste and a smell to it. Your thoughts, the way you speak, how you view things in the moment… using all 5 senses in the moment causes it to be the greatest experience it could be, or just another dull meaningless passing if let it be that way.
 
Can you make this a sweet experience? or will it have a stench and leave a bad taste in your mouth?
 
Take time to savor the flavor of this moment.

Eyes and Ears in your Hands

Sense of touch:
Having eyes and ears in your hands
 
This was a great way to explain the sense of touch in this moment of communication. Touch helps you to feel and understand the story of your cup, a Wabi Sabi style or maybe even kintsugi style cup that has a rich history to it. Looking and seeing, hearing and listening, and touching and experiencing enhances the experience of the moment in time to be unforgettable, because an ichigo ichie reminds you that this moment is like no other, and can not happen again. 
 
Another aspect of touch is the texture. We will tackle taste soon, but texture is important. The choice of the texture the “tea master” choose to offer can be a sign of respect for the guest, and also a form as anticipating the things the guest would like, almost like entertainment, showing that the time being spent is very special. 
 
There are neural pathways all over your body, but your brain pays way more attention to what you feel with your hands, lips, and tongue. The receptors here can directly link to emotions, and emotions can ultimately influence your reality. 
 
Emotionally linked touch will make your experience with an object more meaningful (or not), so being together and sharing time and space needs to be an orchestrated positive experience. 
 
Think: touching a book at a bookstore may help you select that book. Touching that same book title, will be totally different if given to you by an old friend you haven’t seen in years, or maybe as a gift from someone you’re in love with, and that they wanted to give you something you’d like. 
The book probably feels the same. But the emotions and experience attached to the object makes the object more important to the history of you.  

Looking and Seeing

Looking and seeing
Yesterday we talked about hearing and listening, today is on looking and seeing. 
 
Just like hearing things and not listening, we can also easily look without seeing. Being in the moment when you are having your tea with yourself or a meeting someone important, see. See what is being presented. Listen to what you hear, and see the sights you are looking at. 
 
We can miss things we don’t see even when we’re looking right at it. Have you ever had someone you see often, but you don’t miss them until you can’t see them anymore? 
 
Hiro Obayashi was so busy that he missed his kids growing up. One day he came home from traveling and asked where the kids were. They had moved out and left for college. 
 
Missing the moment sometimes will not allow you to get the time back. 
 
I can’t tell you enough, but sometimes, enjoy the moment by putting the phone down. Go ahead and capture the memory, but actually live it too. Don’t just stage the photo op, or snap the plate of food, enjoy it, share it, taste something new, savor the flavor. 
 
Actually look for something new about something you always see. Look at the details. See why the object is in front of you, and find meaning from it. 

Intentional Listening

Intentional Listening 
“Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.”
James 1:19-21 MSG
 
Lead with your ears. The Tea Ceremony utilizes all 5 senses: Taste, Touch, Smell, Sight, and Sound.
 
Today I wanted to look at Sound, or the art of listening. First off in communication, you have to deal with filters. When words are spoken, they have to break through the opinion barrier, the prejudice and pre-conceived notions on the subject, the body language and interpretation of you’re really trying to say behind what’s being said, and all this has to be processed and then compartmentalized for you get meaning out of it.
 
Unfortunately, since we go through all this, a lot of communication seems not to convey what deliverer wants to get through to the recipient. On top of the words getting through, there is usually noise happening internally and externally. 
 
For words to reach you, we stop time (ichigo ichie), and enjoy the moment. Every word we share has meaning. Every image in our thoughts have clarity. This is why we set up a space to tackle the senses. For sound, we find a quiet space where we can hear. 
 
Now that we have a space where we can hear, and lay ground rules for listening:
We can talk fully expressing the thoughts we have without prejudgment.
We ask questions without interrupting 
We won’t give advice unless we’re asked to
We give attention to the person talking
We set aside devices that may distract us for this moment
 
Fully embracing someone’s thoughts can be life changing for both parties if you let it.

Have Tea With Yourself

Have tea with yourself
The Chanoyu ceremony was designed for at least two people. The tea master and a guest, and we will break down the meaning of the steps, the tools, the concept of the whole thing, but first, I wanted to start with this thought:
Regularly have tea with yourself. 
 
The tea ceremony creates a space for you to be still, setting aside the daily worries, criticisms, and complaints out of your mind for this moment. Remember ichigo ichie, and appreciate the time you get to spend with yourself and God while you are alone with your tea. 
 
So. Here are a few suggestions for this:
the place you do it should inspire calm. 
It’s ok to take time, and leave space for silence. 
Think of things related to yourself and the moment, everything else can wait. 
Notice the uniqueness of things all around. 
Listen to your thoughts as you notice. 
Reflect on the things you’ve notice and how it relates to things happening throughout your life. 
 
This one speaks the most to me. 
I have to ask myself often:
How does what you’ve notice, or what God has shown you, relate to you? 
What is God saying?
He never stops talking. 
He never stops listening. 
When we seek an answer. He shows it. Usually right when we ask. 
The problem is we don’t listen, or we don’t want to hear the answer because we know what it should be. 
 
Overall enjoy your moments spent enjoying the tea. It’s very easy to grab a drink and go. It takes discipline to enjoy and moment and get meaning from it. 

Your life is your proof!

How you are living your life is the proof that you existed. 
Your life is a testimony to your existence, God’s existence, and that you and God worked together to bring about a better world. 
 
You’ve been setup to be the way you are, what you like and dislike, to live where you do, interact with who you do, because you have been chosen to. No one else with your combination of circumstances will ever exist, so be proud! 
 
It’s been setup, but how effective you are in this life has been left up to how effective you want to be. 
No one will make you take a risk
No one will make you pursue a love interest
No one will make you become proud of yourself
No one will make you learn about your past, so you can deal with the present strategically, so you can have a bright future
 
Those are all things that only you can do. 
And in doing so, you prove the existence of you and God being in kahootz together!